


Make it the Shape of Everything You Need

by BlackEyedGirl



Category: Captain America (Movies), Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Angst, Crossover, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-28
Updated: 2013-01-28
Packaged: 2017-11-27 08:44:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 794
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/660029
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlackEyedGirl/pseuds/BlackEyedGirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are many worlds and, frankly, Jefferson is sure that they recycle their material. [Written for Porn Battle XIV; spoilers for OUAT S2]</p>
            </blockquote>





	Make it the Shape of Everything You Need

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Porn Battle XIV for prompt _lost_.
> 
> Title from Richard Siken - 'You are Jeff'

There are many worlds and, frankly, Jefferson is sure that they recycle their material. That is the only explanation for all of the lost princesses, crowned and uncrowned, and all the wicked imps and evil queens, all the mad bad men and all the shining heroes with smiles that Jefferson has never quite understood. In all of the worlds, the only things that ever seemed quite irreducibly themselves, unique and irreplaceable, were the hat, his daughter, and Alice. Two of those are gone now and the other is asleep in her bed, dreaming of tea parties with tears creeping under her eyelashes.

Steve Rogers rode into town on a motorbike that had seen better days, looking for something which was not what he found. He had not expected Jefferson. Steve says that Jefferson looks just like a friend of his. Jefferson doesn't hear friend but he sees ghost. Sees the other too. He has always been able to see the invisible edges of things - that was the most useful skill for a portal-jumper.

There are many worlds and Jefferson does not remember them all but he has never been a soldier. Jefferson found things, and people, and sometimes regretted his search.

They are in his house, no ruse required. Steve had followed him here. Jefferson gives Steve a cup of tea. Steve takes hold of his hand and looks at it, through eyes that Jefferson knows must be starting to blur. Steve says, “Calluses.”

Jefferson pricked his fingers with the needles, creating hundreds of thousands of hats that went nowhere but onto a shelf. Steve rubs his own rough fingers over Jefferson’s. He says, almost apologetically, “It won’t work on me.”

“What won’t?”

“The tea.” He shrugs broad shoulders. “Things like that... they don’t work on me.”

Jefferson had only wanted to make him sleep. Steve is too much, too open with his hopeful looks but if the magic had borrowed Jefferson’s form to make a soldier who would fall out of this world forty years before Jefferson would fall into it, then it is outside his power to fix. Jefferson only found things, and now he cannot even do that. Steve is still touching him.

“You wouldn’t want him,” Jefferson says, “if you could find him now. No one ever comes back the same.” Today he made Grace cry, unintentional, unthinking, unable to be undone. 

Steve just asks, “What happened to your neck?” very quietly. He slides the scarf away, and his fingers run along the scar.

Nothing works without a balance. Jefferson says, “Make a wish,” and pulls off Steve’s shirt. Steve inhales, but neither of them is truly surprised.

Steve made a wish for strength to defend his land and his wish was granted to him. Perhaps his friend was just the cost of the wishing. In their world, Steve would be a knight, even a prince. Jefferson was never one of those either. Although neither was the friend, from what Steve says in his remembering. Princes seldom seek out other princes, at least in Jefferson’s recollection. He is not always sure, when it comes to things less fundamental than Grace, where one of those lost worlds ended and other began. 

Steve lets himself be rolled onto the floor, onto the rug. His chest is golden, with muscles toned from fighting. Jefferson moves down his body, pushing the trousers past Steve’s hips, pressing his nose against the crease of Steve’s thigh, breathing him in. He is real.

Steve reaches out blindly, hand ending up in Jefferson’s hair, not pulling but settled there. He curves his thumb around Jefferson’s ear.

Perhaps, in another other world, someone with Jefferson’s face and someone with Steve’s are sharing true love’s kiss and shattering a curse. In this one, Steve bites back a word which is not ‘Jefferson’ and that is fine. Names are too important.

When he has caught his breath, Steve tugs Jefferson up and fumbles with the buttons of his slacks. His hands are open and warm, slick with his own spending. He needs no instruction in how to press Jefferson’s body to its best advantage. He needs no instruction in the kiss, though it has been decades since the last time anyone kissed Jefferson. He pulls back for a moment and his eyes are wide open, so Jefferson can see himself reflected in them.

“It wasn’t magic,” Steve says, when they’re done. “That made me... like this. It was science, it was a machine and chemicals in a bottle. Not magic.”

“That’s what they all say,” Jefferson answers, “until they need to believe a wish could come true.” 

“This wasn’t-.” Steve says.

“I know,” Jefferson answers. Jefferson can’t find everything; sometimes he can only manage an approximation. But there are many worlds.


End file.
